The Neverending Story: Justice League #23 Review

Editor’s Note: But evil hasn’t been imprisoned, Pandora, only spoiled!

So here we are: with Justice League #23, and the final chapter of The Trinity War. Now, let’s take a minute and look back at how we got here.

Two years ago next week, DC Comic released the final issue of Flashpoint, which closed out the DC Universe as it had been since Crisis On Infinite Earths back in 1986, and ushering in the New 52 era. And in both books – and in every new first issue that DC released in September, 2011 – DC Editorial made sure that we were shown the mysterious hooded woman (who was eventually identified as Pandora), with the implication being that she had some major part in the implosion of the pre-rebooted (Pre-booted? The Old 52? Pre-52? Post-Crisis Trapped In The Body Of A – ah, fuck it) DC Universe, and that her story would give us the real skinny behind the whole shakeup.

Over the intervening two years, we learned that Pandora was part of a troika of supernatural beings, including The Question and The Phantom Stranger, and that she was trying to dispose of her box (this is the space where I deleted seven different childish jokes) to eliminate evil. Which led us to The Trinity War, where all the members of the various Justice Leagues (which means basically every hero in the DC Universe minus O.M.A.C.) came together with Pandora as a major player, and the hopes that we might finally get an answer about Pandora’s role in the reboot, once the story ended.

So did we? Nah! Turns out Geoff Johns had a surprise up his sleeve for the ending of The Trinity War! He didn’t write one!

Somewhere, Joss Whedon is thanking God he cast his lot with Marvel Comics.

So following the events of Justice League Dark #23, the remainder of the Justice Leagues have made their way to Athens, giving Pandora’s Box a plethora of superheroes to corrupt into fighting over itself. John Constantine remains the only person who the box cannot corrupt, due to the fact that he is already corrupt (because it is a widely-known fact that a person can only become just so corrupt before stopping. This is why our economy has been booming since 2001! And why the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office is so far underwater our state representative is Arthur Fucking Curry!), but he soon loses control of the box to Batman, because Batman is the world’s greatest detective, while Constantine’s only superpower is the ability to turn lager into urine. Anyway, while everyone goes apeshit with jealousy and avarice, The Outsider (the bowler-hatted dude in charge of the Secret Society) soliloquizes about how he’s from another world, and he’s been planning this action for five years. Anyhoo, eventually someone realizes that Superman is becoming sicker and sicker despite spending extended periods of time away from Pandora’s Box, does a scan, and discovers that Supes has a sliver of Kryptonite wedged into his brain. Then a traitor reveals themselves, and Cyborg explodes, and The Outsider shows up and claims that Pandora’s Box actually isn’t magic, and then the Crime Syndicate of America shows up on the second-to-last page!

And then the last page is a promo for all the Villain’s Month covers DC is featuring next month!

Seriously, that’s the ending. Such as it is. But I’ll get to that in a minute. But first, I’ll get to the positives here.

There is one hell of a lot of good-looking and well-illustrated (courtesy of Ivan Reis) action of superheroes punching on superheroes here. Johns makes a point of playing up the implied love triangle between Superman, Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor, throwing in Batman for good measure because we all know that Batman is a smooth pimp who is irresistible to the ladies, and certainly not because a big double-paged splash of Superman shouting, “I won’t stop until Nick Fury Lite is dead!” wouldn’t carry nearly as much dramatic weight. Romantic jealousy is something that every reader has felt, so seeing a creeping corruption taking that effect on people felt believable and emotional. Certainly more relatable than just having a slavering desire just to have the damn thing; making the corruption take the form of romantic jealousy elevates the scene from being a simple riff on the middle act of Return of The King with a few spandex pervert suits chucked in to stave off the lawsuits.

But with that said, there are plot holes and leaps in logic here that boggle the fucking mind. Let’s start with the revelation that Pandora’s Box isn’t magic at all, but the Earth 3 version of a Mother Box. This would be a fine riff on the similarities between the names of the devices, and a good way to bring the Crime Syndicate in… or it would if it had been teased that way in any part of The Trinity War up until that revelation, or if it made any Goddamned sense at all within the internal logic of the story itself.

We have spent not just five prior issues of The Trinity War, but literally years worth of stories learning that Pandora and Pandora’s Box were based in magic. After all, the magic-based characters were major parts of this story; we had John Constantine trying to take Shazam out of play because of the magic basis of his powers. In the last issue of Justice League Dark, we see Constantine and Zatanna as the only people who have any kind of resistance to Pandora’s Box, and it ain’t because it’s allergic to cigarettes and boobs. Further, we have seen Pandora placed on the level of The Question and The Phantom Stranger, who we have seen answering not only to magical being, but to God himself. The Big Himself-Damned Kahuna…

…and yet The Outsider tells us, nope! It’s actually science! But that the Gods who damned Pandora never understood that! And neither did the readers!

So what we have here is kind of a dirty cheat; we’re told MAGIC-MAGIC-MAGIC over and over again for years… right up until the creators need it to not be magic. And apparently it’s science so advanced that it fooled God himself… unless I’m wrong. After all, it’s possible that The Phantom Stranger is someone wearing the thirty pieces of silver he was paid for betraying some other Jesus. I have, after all, been drinking… but not so much that I’m not aware that this development came from right out of nowhere, as far as I can tell.

And then there’s Cyborg exploding. Apparently the traitor dropped some virus into Vic’s hardware, which causes it, right at the worst possible moment, to erupt from his body and become, well, Ultron. Now, I swear that I read every issue of The Trinity War, and I will again grant that I have been drinking, but I remember no indication that this was something that was even intimated. Now, I’ll dig through my longboxes and see if there’s some scene of the traitor tinkering with Vic that I glossed over or something, but the best I can tell is that this happened because science! Or something. And the fact John had the traitor feel the need to explain Grid (Ultron’s DC name) to Power Ring (and, by extension, to us) makes me believe that I’m right, and this is just something that was thrown in to add a big surprising reveal at the end of the story, but again: it feels like a cheat because I remember no indication that this was a thing that might happen.

And then there’s that ending that doesn’t end. Which, in it’s own way, was the best part of the story while still being the worst of all possible endings: one that doesn’t exist.

We go through six issues of The Trinity War to see The Crime Syndicate show up… and then run off. There’s no confrontation, there’s no punches thrown, there’s… just a placard telling us to tune in next month for Forever Evil. And initially, this infuriated me. After all, we have almost the entirety of the DC superhero universe standing there – sure, Superman’s sick, Cyborg’s down and Green Lantern is busy keeping what’s left of Vic Stone from bleeding out, but there are plenty of able-bodied heroes still floating around – and all we get is a See You Next Tuesday?

Remember how you felt walking out of The Matrix Reloaded? When it just stopped and told you that, if you wanted to know what happened, you’d need to come back to see the real ending? That was my first impression here. Particularly after two years of Pandora teases, and my belief that if I hung through The Trinity War, I might see her role in the destruction of the Old 52.

But I’m gonna take a glass-half-full view of this revelation, and try to remember that, if the Crime Syndicate survived the events of Flashpoint, that means that there is a possible out here, allowing any element of the pre-New 52 DC Universe to eventually reappear. Which is an exciting prospect; while I am generally enjoying a lot of the New 52 books, I am never gonna give up my original copies of John Byrne’s 1986 The Man of Steel in favor of Grant Morrison’s Action Comics arc… and this could mean that the Hellblazer version of John Constantine is still out there somewhere! And while there are no concrete answers about Pandora’s role in the destruction of the post-Crisis DC Universe, the fact is that we now have a concrete link between Pandora and the old DC Multiverse. Which means (I hope) that there actually are some answers on the way… and maybe some more appearances from beyond the grave, so to speak.

But this is a very optimistic view, coming from a comic reader who has 37 years of following various continuities under his belt. Taken on its own, this is an issue where the magic at its story’s core is thrown out at the last second, where a character blows up because it might look cool, where the pervasive threat just takes a breather for no obvious reason beyond giving everyone a chance to finally figure out (and tell us) what happened to Superman, and where the ending is just a tease for another even bigger crossover. If I was a Marvel guy who jumped onto The Trinity War to get a taste of what DC was up to, I sure as hell wouldn’t stick around to buy into yet another event comic to see how it all turns out.

I, however, will. Not because Justice League #23 or The Trinity War was particularly good… but because after two years, I will find out why I spent half of September, 2011 playing Where’s Waldo with a strange girl in a red hood. Particularly one who was clearly post-Crisis but pre-reboot.